The Looker gives the player a unique experience, and answers an interesting question: what would it be like to play The Witness from the perspective of, say, Egoraptor?
I learned of this game (as many others have) from Dunkey's video. From what I saw in that video I assumed that this game came from a relatively incurious perspective on its source material, and while I don't think my first impression was entirely wrong I will admit that The Looker did win me over pretty quick. I had already seen the useless hint button gag. What I did not expect was to find a second useless hint button, rusted over, sitting in a garbage can, smoking and drinking, with a story to tell.
The moments in which this game is overtly making fun of The Witness are without a doubt its worst. From the second that you see the first puzzle the fact that the simple abstract symbols of The Witness have been replaced with familiar words seems to completely undermine any meaningful comparison with what the original game is actually doing. Frankly there were times that I thought the game was going to pull the rug out from under me and it didn't. I thought for sure as I was writing down the sequences of the book puzzle that at the end the solution would be a non-sequitur and the game would make fun of me for taking notes; it did not. The beeping puzzle is obviously making fun of the audio puzzles in the original but it's so much worse of a puzzle that the joke completely falls flat.
The best moments of the game are when it genuinely provides interesting mechanical explorations beyond what The Witness's self seriousness would have allowed. The cannon puzzle, the snake game, and the rail shooter game are truly interesting evolutions of elements of this game's inspiration, integrating the perspective shifts and maze-solving in ways that make The Witness only look more clever, if less complete.
And that's kind of the be-all and end-all, being derived so closely from The Witness, all of The Looker's best elements, even the ways in which it builds on that game, are so tied to it that any joke at the original game's expense holds little weight. In what seems to be an attempt to reveal the apparent vapidity of The Witness, The Looker only reaffirms that the original game was a worthwhile effort.
I love The Witness, I don't hate The Looker. It's humor is generally entertaining, if disappointing and predictable. I kind of wish that an actual score attack game similar to the rail shooter segment existed on its own.
I learned of this game (as many others have) from Dunkey's video. From what I saw in that video I assumed that this game came from a relatively incurious perspective on its source material, and while I don't think my first impression was entirely wrong I will admit that The Looker did win me over pretty quick. I had already seen the useless hint button gag. What I did not expect was to find a second useless hint button, rusted over, sitting in a garbage can, smoking and drinking, with a story to tell.
The moments in which this game is overtly making fun of The Witness are without a doubt its worst. From the second that you see the first puzzle the fact that the simple abstract symbols of The Witness have been replaced with familiar words seems to completely undermine any meaningful comparison with what the original game is actually doing. Frankly there were times that I thought the game was going to pull the rug out from under me and it didn't. I thought for sure as I was writing down the sequences of the book puzzle that at the end the solution would be a non-sequitur and the game would make fun of me for taking notes; it did not. The beeping puzzle is obviously making fun of the audio puzzles in the original but it's so much worse of a puzzle that the joke completely falls flat.
The best moments of the game are when it genuinely provides interesting mechanical explorations beyond what The Witness's self seriousness would have allowed. The cannon puzzle, the snake game, and the rail shooter game are truly interesting evolutions of elements of this game's inspiration, integrating the perspective shifts and maze-solving in ways that make The Witness only look more clever, if less complete.
And that's kind of the be-all and end-all, being derived so closely from The Witness, all of The Looker's best elements, even the ways in which it builds on that game, are so tied to it that any joke at the original game's expense holds little weight. In what seems to be an attempt to reveal the apparent vapidity of The Witness, The Looker only reaffirms that the original game was a worthwhile effort.
I love The Witness, I don't hate The Looker. It's humor is generally entertaining, if disappointing and predictable. I kind of wish that an actual score attack game similar to the rail shooter segment existed on its own.
ThruLidlessEye
1 year ago